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CDC warns of superbug 'nightmare'

Posted:
03/10/2013 12:00:04 PM MDT

What constitutes a "nightmare" to the Centers for Disease Control and Infection? These days, it's a family of bacteria that can't be treated with our most powerful antibiotics and kills half of those infected by it.

Even scarier, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae can transfer their resistance to antibiotics to other bacteria.

"CRE are nightmare bacteria," CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a news release. "Our strongest antibiotics don't work and patients are left with potentially untreatable infections. Doctors, hospital leaders and public health must work together now to implement the CDC's 'detect and protect' strategy and stop these infections from spreading."

And not just from spreading in hospitals, but also from getting into the community. The CRE infections so far have been confined to health-care facilities.

To keep it that way, and to reduce the spread of CRE infections in hospitals, the CDC is urging hospitals to enforce infection-control precautions; group together patients with CRE; segregate staff, rooms and equipment to patients with CRE; tell facilities when patients with CRE are transferred; and use antibiotics carefully.

That last one is also one key to reducing the increase in superbugs like CRE and MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), bacteria that develop resistance to treatment.

Overuse and improper use of antibiotics over the years, both in the medical community and the livestock industry, has led to an increase in the number of bacteria that are drug-resistant. Doctors are getting better at proper use of antibiotics, the CDC reports, but they could do more. The livestock industry could be doing a lot more.

At least 80 percent of antibiotics used annually in the U.S. are used routinely in livestock to promote growth. And though the Food and Drug Administration for years has acknowledged that use as a threat to public health through the increase of superbugs, the agency has banned only one type of antibiotic in livestock and urged the industry to voluntarily limit antibiotic use to promote growth.

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